Guys,

I grew up fishing creeks, rivers and ponds, and my friend grew up fishing oxbows in LA. We have been working on getting to know the lakes a little, but seem to can not translate our success into a regular thing.

As you can tell I have a lot of girls and my friend as a few too. All we are wanting to do is get the kids interest (so the wife get a break) and we can all have some fun. We would like to get them on some bluegills and other panfish. My friend has a boat and we are just looking for place to start. We been to Joe Pool, Eagle Mountain, Benbrook and PK and Texoma, our success is fair at best except for Texoma.

Any advise or help would be great. Benbrook is in our back door but we do not mind traveling. We have even consider running to Fairfield to get the kids some real action.

This seems to be the craziest thing we can not translate what we grew up fishing in to the lakes.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Just look to get out with the kids and have good time and maybe a fish fry or two.

Thanks in advance.

Benbrook, PK, and Joe Pool are really close by, as you might know, and offer wonderful populations of white bass and hybrids that will willingly bite to keep the young ladies entertained. Heck, on any one of those lakes, if you want to fish for catfish, just sour a bit of maize and bait up five separate areas. By the time you get back to the first and get the bait in the water, you should expect to get bit.

The fishing barges at Benbrook and Lynn Creek Marina at Joe Pool (or Cedar Hill State Park) offer plenty of bluegill to catch. You can also feed the numerous carp around Lynn Creek if you don't catch too many.

Most lakes I've been to, you can get up near some rip-rap (rocks) along a roadway or bridge, and fish a cricket under a small float to be almost guaranteed of catching some bluegill or other similar sunfish. If there are some weed beds nearby, all the better. Often times,the fish are small, but the kids don't seem to care. If you back out a little ways and fish a little deeper, you can catch the bigger ones. As a bonus, here in another couple of weeks or there abouts, the pan-size channel cats will be up in those rocks and they will hit crickets just fine. Fairfield would be a blast for you if you want a chance to get in to some really nice size bluegills. You guys should really try to bring all those kids along and come to the TFF Bream Bustin fish fry @ Fairfield in June. There's a sticky at the top of this page about it. It will be a good time.

Thanks everyone for the advice. We will give it another chance in two weeks. Buddy is in Utah for the Navy inspecting C130's so wont get a chance this weekend.

I will talk to Buddy about going to Fairfield in June for the fish fry.

Thanks again for the advice and we will get out soon and give you all a report.

We'll look forward to seeing you all at the fishfry.

And you will really enjoy catching some of those BIG bluegills there.

Bring that whole clan down to Fairfield for the TFF Bream Bustin Fish Fry. There will be a lot of people there who know what they are doing when it comes to bream. The kids should love it.